Exit Polls Project Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu Winning 7 to 8 Seats in Israeli Election

Exit polls released after voting ended in Israel's election on October 27 project that Yisrael Beytenu, the party led by Avigdor Liberman, will win 7 to 8 seats in the next Knesset. Channel 12 and KAN each gave the party 8 seats, while Channel 13 put it at 7. The party currently holds six seats in the 25th Knesset.

Yisrael Beytenu has run as part of the opposition to the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Throughout the day, Liberman urged supporters to keep voting and to remove what he called the "October massacre government," a reference to the government in office on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. In a post on X, he wrote: "Put a note in the box today, and you'll get public transportation on Shabbat starting tomorrow. Oust the government of the October 7 massacre and the draft dodgers!"

Polls closed at ten in the evening after a day marked by high turnout in the morning and scattered showers of rain in the afternoon. The Central Election Committee rejected a request from Likud to extend voting hours. Channels 11, 12 and 13 all published exit polls on Tuesday night.

Since August 2026, Yisrael Beytenu has generally polled between 7 and 10 seats, and the polling data has been largely consistent. The party was originally popular in the early 2000s with immigrants from former Soviet Union countries and their descendants, but over the past decade and a half it has drawn support from a wider range of Israelis. On October 20, Tzachi Hanegbi, a former head of the National Security Council and longtime Likud politician, said he would vote for Liberman.

In early October, a report said Liberman had suggested handing over Palestinian areas to Jordan. He also criticized Netanyahu for fearmongering about Iran ahead of the vote, has rejected relying on Arab parties' support to form a coalition, and has warned that the United States could recognize a Palestinian state in the coming years.

Liberman founded Yisrael Beytenu in 1999. He had been a Likud activist in the 1990s and served as Director-General of the Prime Minister's Office when Netanyahu was prime minister, resigning over concerns about concessions to the Palestinians. In the early 2000s, he took the party into a coalition with the National Union and became a government minister. The party rose to 15 seats in 2009 and ran jointly with Likud in 2013. Liberman served as Minister of Defense from 2016 to 2018, resigning over what he viewed as appeasement of Hamas.

Some uncertainty hung over the party's result earlier in the day. Reports in the afternoon suggested that high turnout among Arab voters might increase the seat share of Ra'am and the Joint List, which could leave Yisrael Beytenu short of the 3.25 percent vote threshold needed to enter the Knesset.

The outcome of the election will have major implications for coalition negotiations. Exit polls are only preliminary projections, and the final seat distribution will depend on the official vote count.